Truth and Honour

by Greg Marquis

  One of the vexing questions for family-owned enterprises is that of succession. In 1992, a Financial Post examination of the Oland clan said that Derek would not be replaced by a family member when he retired. At the time, his son Andrew was working at the Halifax-Dartmouth Industries Limited shipyard. Asked if he would ever join the family business, he suggested that if he did, it would be on the basis of merit, not bloodline.18 By 1999, the press was reporting that both Andrew and his younger brother Patrick were working for the company. Andrew, then thirty-two, held a MBA from Harvard and was described as having a detailed knowledge of brewery operations. Patrick, who had worked in the food business and was more interested in marketing, was a manager of export sales. They were the sixth generation in the business. Brothers Matthew, twenty-eight, and Giles, twenty-five, worked for Colgate in Ontario and Maritime Steel in Nova Scotia in the information-technology division.19

  The new century brought a number of challenges which involved Moosehead in public disputes with the municipal and provincial governments, something that was common for Irving companies but rare for the Olands. One of these was the rate charged by the City of Saint John to industrial water customers. In 2003, Derek hinted that the brewery might relocate, but soon confirmed that Moosehead would remain in Saint John.20 In a speech to the local Chamber of Commerce, Oland called for better transportation links with New England, lower taxes, and a greater role for entrepreneurs: “Governments can help, but they can’t do it all. And when they do, it usually doesn’t work very well.”21 In 2004 and 2005, Derek spoke out against provincial government financial assistance to Molson (recently bought out by the brewing giant Coors), then building a brewery in Moncton.22 In an interview in 2007, Derek and Andrew expressed concern over recent price hikes by the provincial liquor commission and increases to business taxes and individual income taxes. They were also troubled by a hike in power rates by NB Power, the publicly owned provincial energy utility.23

  Derek Oland, who served on the board of Nova Scotia Power (once a public utility, privatized in 1992), became a fairly visible and consistent promoter of regional business elites. In 1998, during the graduation address at UNB, he spoke of his family’s long history of entrepreneurship. He also cited the “courage, expertise and imagination” of other regional business dynasties such as the Irvings, McCains, and Sobeys.24 In 2008, as executive chairman of Moosehead, Derek supported a controversial proposal whereby the City of Saint John would have sold, at fair-market value, a former industrial site on the waterfront to Irving Oil. Irving then would have sold the land to the Saint John Port Authority in return for permission to construct a multi-purpose building on Long Wharf, a general-cargo wharf that had been expanded and maintained at taxpayer expense for decades. The complex was never built and the former industrial site sits empty to this day.

  In the fall of 2007, Andrew, president of Moosehead Quebec, was informed by his father that he would be taking over as president of Moosehead Breweries in the spring of 2008. This was just after Andrew, as part of a business working group promoting workforce expansion, had campaigned in public for the closure of the Saint John campus of UNB, which his grandfather P. W. had laboured so hard to create and expand. In its place would be an ill-defined polytech to educate people in the skilled trades. Oland was interviewed on CBC radio, and his comments on access to post-secondary education for youth in Saint John were regarded by many as shockingly elitist. The polytech plan was shelved after fierce community opposition.25

  Richard (Dick) Oland, two years younger than Derek, joined the family firm in the mid-1960s, eventually becoming vice-president of operations.26 Born in 1941, Richard attended Rothesay’s private school for boys, but in Grade 10 was shipped to distant Kingston, Ontario, as a boarding student at Regiopolis College. This appears to have been motivated by disciplinary as opposed to academic considerations. Founded in the early nineteenth century, Regiopolis was a Roman Catholic boys school run by the Jesuits. The students slept in a common dorm room in bunk beds. The regime was strict and a former roommate later recalled that “Rick” was bitter about being sent to the institution. After high school, Oland attended the University of New Brunswick where he graduated with a BA in 1966. In 2016, Constance (Connell) Oland recalled that when she started dating her future husband at age sixteen, she realized that “his personality was different.” She claimed that Richard was later diagnosed with Asperger syndrome by a clinical-psychologist friend. His personality issues supposedly became more difficult after he parted ways with Moosehead in the early 1980s, when, in her words, “he started a trucking company basically from scratch.” Despite this, the couple’s social life was described as “good” and included skiing and boating trips, vacations, and get-togethers with their children and grandchildren. In a letter to the court, Constance explained that she had attempted to raise her children “in a loving manner” with structure, reason, and a sense of self. She implied that these qualities had been lacking in her late husband’s upbringing.27 As the public would learn following his murder, Oland could be the guy without a filter. In one infamous episode, he acted badly at his own daughter’s wedding, verbally abusing his son who was master of ceremonies.

  In Last Canadian Beer by Harvey Sawler, Derek explains that both he and Richard had wanted to become president of Moosehead: “I mean that’s it. It’s natural in any company. You’ve got competition for the top job.”28 In the early 1980s, P. W. Oland decided that Derek was best suited to taking over the family business. This decision followed a bit of brinksmanship by Derek, who resigned from the company and was preparing to relocate with his family to New Zealand. The father ended up appointing him executive vice-president. A decade after parting ways with the family business, Richard diplomatically explained that he had been “looking for opportunities,” and “Moosehead was just a career option like any other.” Some speculated that sibling rivalry was the major factor.29 Constance told police in 2011 that the split had occurred because her husband could not “get along with his brother.”30 In one interview, Derek remembered “a little bit of bitterness” over this arrangement.31 Starting in 1996, following the death of their father, Derek’s relationship with his brother was often tense.

  A court case in 1998 revealed that although Richard was no longer part of Moosehead operations, he was not totally divorced from the privately held company. By this time, Moosehead was operating on the plan dictated by P. W. At the February 1998 meeting of Sevenacres Holdings Limited, the brewery’s parent company, it was explained that because of poor sales in the United States in the period 1996–98 the shareholders (Derek, Jane, and Richard) would receive no dividends. The sole director of Sevenacares Holdings, which also owned Alpine Holdings Limited, the Premium Beer Company Inc., Atlantic Grand Prix Inc., the Molson Moosehead Partnership, 39994023 Canada Limited, Alpine Breweries Limited, and the Mooseheads hockey team in Halifax, was Derek Oland. Derek, with 61.1 percent of the shares in the holding company, was the sole director of Moosehead. His sister, Jane Toward, a resident of Montreal, controlled 25.7 percent and Richard was left with 13.2 percent. Richard took the company to court in 1998 to force it to provide consolidated financial statements. At the February meeting, he allegedly stated that he and his sister should have a greater part in running the company and that Derek, as controlling shareholder and chief executive officer, should not be the sole director of the board. Notes taken at the meeting suggest that Ms. Toward shared some of Richard’s concerns and that there was a disagreement over how the company should be audited. In the end, the matter was settled out of court, with Derek promising to provide the requested documents to his siblings.32 More trouble followed, and Richard went to court again. In 2007, Derek, in a process his father called “pruning the tree,” bought out his siblings’ shares and became sole owner of Moosehead.33 The buyout gave Richard considerable capital to invest or with which to enjoy life. Indeed, there are suggestions that much or most of his considerable wealth was not self-g
enerated but inherited from his father.

  Richard was associated with other business ventures before and after leaving Moosehead, such as the Saint John Shipbuilding and Drydock Co. He was a director for a number of companies, including Ganong Brothers, Eastern Provincial Airways, and Newfoundland Capital Corporation. But for most of the 1980s and 1990s, his main business activity was trucking. It turned out that Richard only partly left the family business. He not only controlled a minority interest in Moosehead until 2007, but he also relied on the company now run by his brother for a major share of his trucking business, Brookville Transport.34 Exactly who started the company is not clear. Interviewed in 1992, P. W. explained: “The two boys couldn’t agree. The younger one wanted to be president and he hadn’t the experience. But he’s in the trucking business now. And he’s doing all right.”35

  During the 1990s, Brookville Transport prospered and its operations extended into the United States, giving many drivers a start in the business.36 In 1992, Richard was interviewed in the Financial Post on the subject of the possible abandonment of Canadian Pacific rail lines east of Sherbrooke, Quebec. McCain Foods Limited, the Port of Saint John, and various business organizations feared the impact of the loss of the rail link with Quebec and Ontario, but Oland hoped the trucking industry would fill the void.37 His real problem was that major manufacturers such as the Irvings (forestry and petroleum products) and the McCains (frozen food) preferred to ship their products on their own trucks. Yet by 1994, Oland was CEO of the Brookville group of companies that included Brookville Transport, which had annual sales of $60 million and whose business was growing yearly. That year, he made an unsuccessful bid to purchase Highland Transport from Canadian Pacific.

  By 1997, Brookville’s annual sales were $100 million and the company was dealing with more than five hundred trucks. According to one report, Brookville was at that time one of the top ten trucking firms in Canada. Not everyone was a fan. Many inhabitants of the Saint John residential neighbourhood where the business was located resented heavy truck traffic and lived in fear of accidents. Financial problems developed and that year Brookville Transport was placed under court protection from creditors until it was sold to Contrans Corporation and its subsidiary Brookville Carriers. In August 1997, the new owner dismissed more than 170 drivers. Another casualty of the transition was Oland’s former employee Robert McFadden, who later sued the new owner. According to one press account, “When one of his former companies, Brookville Transport, declared bankruptcy, he [Oland] never repaid the money he owed the mechanics.”38 At the time of its bankruptcy, Brookville relied heavily on its major client, the Repap Paper Mill in the Miramichi. Hauling for Moosehead accounted for only a third of the business, not enough to keep the company stable. This was a risky situation as North America’s pulp and paper industry was in trouble by the 1990s.

  In the Saint John area, Richard was best known to the broader public not for his business activities but his community work. As chair of the 1985 Canada Summer Games organizing committee, he was commonly credited with making that event a success. The games coincided with and contributed to a renewed sense of optimism in Saint John, which was hit hard by the recession of the early 1980s. They also happily coincided with the opening of Market Square, an atrium-enclosed collection of restaurants, bars, and boutiques fronted by a late-Victorian brick facade, meant to inject new life and vibrancy into the city’s declining central business district. As part of planning for the games, a new aquatic centre was built across the street from Market Square and existing sports fields and facilities were upgraded. By most measures, the 1985 games was a success. Four years of planning went into the event, which relied on more than five-thousand volunteers and involved three-thousand, one-hundred amateur athletes. It was supposedly Oland who helped convince key funders that a new track and field stadium should be built on the campus of the University of New Brunswick Saint John. When that $3.2-million facility opened, Oland hosted two federal cabinet ministers, three Members of Parliament, the premier, a MLA, and a number of Canadian Olympians. The Summer Games even bequeathed a $2.6-million surplus, which was converted into a grant program to support young athletes. As of 2002, the fund was worth $5 million. Oland remained on the board of the foundation and except during economic downturns, it doled out an average of $200,000 a year to athletes and sports organizations across Canada.39

  Richard Oland was also president of the board of the New Brunswick Museum during a controversial era, 1991—98. The major development during this period was moving the exhibit space of the museum, which had been established in the 1930s on Douglas Avenue in an older residential neighbourhood of Saint John, to the Market Square complex, which was struggling financially. In 1996, a visiting Prince Philip opened the new three-storey, sixty-thousand-square-foot exhibition centre fronted by a storefront facade inside the mall’s atrium. Richard was praised as the man who saved the museum, yet his time as president was not without controversy. The deal to move the exhibit space downtown was negotiated in secret, despite the fact that the museum was owned by the province and its board appointed by the provincial government. The City of Saint John, which was worried about the financial viability of Market Square, agreed to subsidize the museum for $300,000 a year for fifteen years. After the new exhibit space’s launch, the museum’s administration turned into a public-relations nightmare. The new executive director was embroiled in a series of disputes with staff and a number of the most vocal were laid off.40 Although the executive director, who resigned and was given another provincial government job in 1999, was a divisive figure, some critics ultimately blamed board president Richard Oland and a provincial deputy minister for the mess. Despite this, Oland received the Order of Canada for his community efforts.41

  Like his father before him, Richard Oland continued to be appointed to boards and committees and to receive public accolades. When awarded an honourary degree by the University of New Brunswick Saint John in 2002, he was serving on the boards of the Saint John Development Corporation and the Waterfront Development Committee. In 2006, he was presented with the Saint John YMCA-YWCA Red Triangle Award for public service. His contributions to the Canada Games and the New Brunswick Museum were cited.42 Another important volunteer effort of Oland’s was the project to build a new Roman Catholic church in his home parish of Rothesay. The Olands were an anomaly in past decades, when so much of Saint John’s elite was Protestant and these distinctions mattered. Historically, the Catholics of the Saint John area, most of them Irish, felt discriminated against economically and socially. Saint John did not elect its first Catholic mayor until 1967. Traditionally, there were so few Catholics living in Rothesay and adjacent communities that Catholic children attended the public schools. The Olands were Catholics with money and could afford to place their children in private schools. Richard, who grew up next to the original smaller church, would be buried out of the new Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church that his family helped to build. Just before he was murdered in 2011, Oland met with the Bishop of Saint John to discuss another major fundraising project: the refurbishment of the Roman Catholic cathedral in Saint John.

  Oland enhanced his reputation as a maverick by speaking out on some of the negative aspects of the provincial economy’s domination by a handful of wealthy families, notably the Irvings. Apparently, he was forgetting his own family’s quasi-monopoly on beer sales in New Brunswick, the direct result of provincial alcohol-control policies. He actually took the Irvings to an administrative tribunal over unfair pricing in the trucking business and won, a rarity in New Brunswick. Irving business practices were sometimes controversial, despite their continued explanation that they employed large numbers of New Brunswickers and invested in the province’s communities. When legendary tycoon K. C. Irving died in his Bermuda tax haven in 1992, Oland sounded like a left-wing muckraker in denouncing Irving’s negative impact on the province. Four years later, when the Southam chain of newspapers was portraying the
Irving empire as being at a crossroads, Oland argued that corporate concentration retarded New Brunswick’s economic development.43 It was one thing for union leaders, environmentalists, and left-wing politicians to become Irving-bashers, but almost unheard of for members of the business community or mainstream politicians to publicly criticize the Irving empire. The reasons behind this were fear and self-interest. Yet Oland’s independent stand did not seem to hurt his stature as a business leader. He served for two terms, for example, on Enterprise Saint John, a publicly funded economic development organization dominated by business interests that constantly attempts to improve the area’s economy and public image.44

  The other sector where Oland clashed with the Irvings was energy, specifically natural gas, which in the 1990s was being promoted as the clean, cheap fuel of the future. In 1998, he joined with industrialist Harrison McCain and a number of other New Brunswick investors to form Gas New Brunswick, a bid to secure natural-gas distribution rights in the upper St. John River valley and north shore of the province. Two-thirds of the entity was owned by the powerful Consumers Gas Energy Limited of Ontario. At this time, Saint John boosters, in typical exaggerated fashion, were claiming the cheaper energy, in the form of offshore Nova Scotia natural gas, was the economic salvation of not only the city but the entire province. The provincial government was insistent that New Brunswick share in the benefits of a pipeline that would export cleaner energy from Nova Scotia to New England. Irving interests were also hoping to gain access to Sable Island natural gas that would be passing through the province via the Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline (M&NEP) and signed an agreement with Westcoast Energy Inc. to build a branch line. The Gas New Brunswick consortium promised to build pipelines, without aid from the provincial government, to service industrial and residential customers in the northern areas of the province. Oland was one of two investors from Saint John.45